Top-down signals

…apical dendrites receive primarily top-down signals from associative and motor regions, while the cell bodies and nearby dendrites of these same pyramidal neurons are mostly targeted by bottom-up or locally recurrent inputs from the sensory periphery. Due to these differences, a number of theories in computational neuroscience postulate a unique role for apical dendrites in shaping sensory processing and plasticity in the face of new or surprising stimul

…learn such abstractions through top-down signals that drive synaptic plasticity. This is commonly done with backpropagation, an algorithm that is considered biologically implausible. In this work, we present a novel dynamic target propagation framework for hierarchical learning that uses Differential Hebbian (DH) updates, a rate-based version of Spike-Time-Dependent Plasticity. Our framework is based on the Deep Feedback Control (D

…laboratory that investigates the role top-down signals play in establishing such coherent perceptual experience. Based on the results of several psychophysical experiments I will introduce a theory of “self-consistent inference” and show how it can account for human perceptual behavior. The talk will close with a discussion of how th